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Monday, July 14, 2008

We went to the zoo again today. This time I went with my friend Jen and her 4 kids. Lexi brought along a friend also so there were 11 kids between me and Jen. Jackson spent the first half of the trip dreading the moment we reached the play zoo because he knew he had to return the geode he stole the last time we were there. We walked up to the first employees we found which just happened to be teenage boys. Anyway, Jax burst into tears and told them that he'd taken the rock and was sorry and wanted to return it. The teenage boys looked shocked and said, "Good job! Thanks for being honest and bringing it back, dude!" (I was kinda hoping to find a grumpy old man who would give him a lecture about stealing!) So that's taken care of and hopefully he never does it again.

Here are some more pictures. See- keep reading my blog and eventually you'll see the entire animal kingdom from the comfort of your couch in your nice air-conditioned home! No walking required.

Timon

Brooklyn in her natural state.

A stick insect. Ewwww!

The fountain is back! Yay! I'm glad they didn't take it out. All they did was add these....

Sharks!!!

The gang minus 2 kiddos

polar bear. He was playing in the water and putting on a fun show. We watched him for a long time and when we finally moved on, this is what Brooklyn did...

You got it. She threw a fit and even jumped out of the wagon while it was moving and ran back to the polar bear.

Maybe I should buy her this polar bear to stop her crying.BAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAA!!!!! NOT! In case you can't see - the price tag reads $2,699.95!

Chito and Rita are spectacled bears. What kind of bears? Spectacled bears!

The gang minus Brooklyn. They're soaking wet from standing in a sprinkler by the elephants.

baby giraffe

bison

It was a long day

and we were stopped by an even longer train on the way home. 150+ cars!

Brooklyn's head kept flopping forward so Austin came up with this creative restraint system. Yep, they're goggles.

From the zoo, we had to go straight on to Jackson's last baseball game. I was all hot and sweaty and my hair was gross and I smelled like a camel. Lovely. I just always feel this obsessive need to hop in the shower the instant I get home from the zoo. Anyway, Jackson did a great job pitching and hitting, but the team lost so they came in 4th for the season. Not too bad!

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Someone just left me this comment:

"I don't know if you read all your comments... I seem to recall you saying somewhere that it can take you awhile to get through your e-mail... I just wanted you to know I gave you an award that I am supposed to pass on for blogs that are fun to read. It is a long post and I've got another award before that one... you are the last one on the list if you don't want to read through it all. I don't see where you've posted any of those kinds of doohickeys so don't feel like you have to put it on your sidebar or anything. You just make me laugh."

Thank you so much and thank you to HMC who gave me an award last week and to all the awesome, sweet bloggers who have given me awards in the past. You're right - I don't put them on my sidebar because I don't think I'd have enough room to put all of them there. (Man, do I sound full of myself, or what?!) I absolutely appreciate all of them however! You guys rock!

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I did pick the winner of the SafetyTats Saturday night, but then forgot to post it! Oops! The winner is...Random Integer GeneratorHere are your random numbers:9Timestamp: 2008-07-12 02:25:10 UTC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For those of you inquiring about the Luvs diaper coupon, I removed the link because they "ran out of coupons" a couple hours after I posted it. I thought that was crappy, so I took the whole link down.

47 comments:

Brooklyn reminds me of my 3 1/2 year old. I am pretty sure she would cut her nose off to spite her face. She got mad at me for making her brush her teeth one night so she announced, "I don't want to do gymnastics anymore!" I guess she thought that would hurt me. lol. The next day she changed her mind. Brooklyn looks very tan and her hair looks blonder.... does it lighten from the sun?

The zoo... you know, it is because of the zoo that I am tortured daily by Paco, the terrorist, our son's 7 year old quaker parrot. One of our many trips to the zoo, we were hanging out in the kiddie area where they had parrots in big cages at the kids' eye level. When our son was 5 the parrots talked to him... but would not talk to his older sisters. He fell in love. He asked if he saved his money could he get a parrot. I don't save money so I said, "SURE!" That little booger would save pennies he found in the street! When he was 9 he had enough money to buy a quaker parrot and WE LET HIM! Only the gal selling him had two and when she saw how the birds took to our son, she let him have both for the price of one. Well, Paco, the terrorist, killed Taco a year later. He drives me crazy. A couple of years ago our son asked if he saved his money could he get a drum set. We said, "NO!"

Dawn, I think cool teenagers might just have a better affect then the grumpy old man would have. They were glad he did the right thing and seemed proud of him. He clearly felt bad before he even got there so I think lesson learned and maybe it will even stick! Heh we can always hope!

I know I am a bit late in asking, but I figured that you would get this anyways. My husband and I are going to the US (Ohio) to visit my sister in 15days (yes, my sister is counting the days) and we will be bringing out 18month old boy who has NO fear of running off by himself. I would love to get the SafetyTats, but they are too many for just our trip. Do you know if I can order 1 pack and have one phone number written on like 5 or 6, and another number written on the rest? We live in Italy, so we will be 'renting' a phone while we will be in the US. By the way- I love reading your blog... it helps me feel that I am not alone with some things, and that what my child does is fairly 'normal'. Not to mention that it always makes me take my daily dose of laughter.

I have been wracking my brain for nearly 5 years, trying to figure out ways to get my kids heads to stop hanging on their chests everytime they pass out in the car...and just like that, your kid figures it out! I'm totally impressed... and I need to go buy some goggles!

LOL! Ok, I think the "toddler head restraint system" is just about the funniest thing I've seen! WTG Austin. With ingenuity like that he really is an engineer in the making.

And thanks for the identification of the Spectacled Bears. I probably should have known that from Diego (or our own visit to the zoo last week), but I don't usually actually SEE those shows, I just hear them in the background.

Love the head restraint. I just read a few posts back about the pacifier and I am so sorry. My daughter wouldn't be in the same room with them when she was a baby, but she got a hold of one when she was 2, and it was a torrid love affair that lasted till she was 8. Hope Brooklyn's is shorter!

HI Dawn,The photo of your daughter with her sippy cup at the zoo reminded me of my "impulsive" son who decided to throw his sippy into the animal area! Luckily it was in where the eagles were on the grass, and it only took about 30 minutes to find a zoo employee to fetch it for us.... I hope he learned a good lesson that day... he almost lost his sippy (he sucks to calm himself....)

Glad you had fun at the zoo, and sorryyou smelled like a camel at Jacksons game:)) I'm sure everyone else was hot and icky too.Interesting head restraint that Austin rigged for Brooklyn... I'm definitely going to be looking forward to the future - a book by austing - "Things That I Have Invented". Have a great day Dawn!

LOL...love the "Spectacled Bears" Diego reference. That episode cracks me up because the way Rosie Perez, who voices Click the camera, says "bears". I had to laugh because the other day my mom asked me if I had seen something on the news, and I told her, "Mom, unless Diego and Dora start giving the news report, the answer would be no."

Ok, so the older my daughter Emma gets, the more she "resembles" Brooklyn. (I'm talking tantrums here.) It's all so fun, fun, fun to have a strong witted child, isn't it?So, am I right or what? Once you get past 5 kids...my theory is "What's one more?". It was no harder with 11 than it is with 6, is it?

You kids are just as hilarious as you are!! Also just as creative! Love the pics from the zoo!! 2K for that bear ~ I can't believe they even have a price tag ~ do you think enough people asked how much it was that they finally just put a price tag on it!! Holy cow!

Ok, I know I'm bad at math, but I'm confused here. Your six kids, plus Jen's four kids, plus Lexi's friend equals 11 kids (right?). Then the picture of eight kids had a caption of "the gang minus 2 kiddos" (8 + 2 = 10 last time I checked). So I'm thinking that there was either an invisible kid in the picture, or a missing kid. Or maybe the other kid is the dark, shadowy, tigger looking thing next to Brooklyn. hmm.

Great zoo pictures. I know that you have been asked this before, but, (I have forgotten...lost brain cells through 5 pregnancies!) what type of camera do you have? Your pictures come out looking really clear.

I'm curious...Does Brooklyn habitally go to Austin for comfort? How is Savannah with Brooklyn? In many pictures we see Austin taking care of his little sister. I love seeing pictures of your older kids taking care of the younger ones. I tell my kids all the time that their brothers and sisters are their friends for the rest of their lives.

BTW...everyone smells like camels after a visit to the zoo. Here in Texas, we smell like camels after watching summer baseball. It's so hot, I think my fingernails sweat.

It's funny because I was at the Brookfield Zoo today with my kids. I thought to myself, it would be funny if you were there again with your kids because I've noticed you've gone quite a bit this summer. I wondered if I'd recognize you or your children, but I don't think we saw you. We did spend time at the polar bear swimming and the sprayer at the elephants too, but must have been at different times!

Keep the zoo pics coming. I'll just show them to my 7yo and we can pretend we went this year LOL. Of course our zoo trips also include a week long visit to grandma and grandpa's 6 hours away. It just isn't happening with gas prices this year.

I loved the captions on the pictures of Brooklyn too. Those tantrums really ring true for me as we're in the midst of the "terrible toddlers" as I call them since they don't seem to end until the child is about 4. And even then it's just on to a new life phase.

I love the head restraint! Funny thing is I saw something similar in a catalog recently only it was a velcro "cap" that basically velcroed the child's head to a velcro attachment on the carseat. My guess is the "goggle design" is cheaper!

So do your friends now want to go to the zoo with you just so you have more blog material and they can experience it firsthand?

And I LOOOOOOOVE the goggles restraint. I could have used that today as Mister Man fell asleep in the car on the way home from swimming and drooled all over his cheek (I'm still working out how he did that).

Congrats to Jackson for good baseball play, too!

And of course... boo to Luv's! Running out of coupons? Very poor planning by their marketing department. Unlike you, I had bad Luv's experiences, so this just adds another nail in their coffin for me. Of course, we're not having any more kids, so... sort of a moot point for me!

What? What? WHAT? I stop reading for a couple if months due to an insane ammount of sewing I've been doing, I come back and Brooklyn is HUGE! Not only that, but her hair grew like a FOOT and it's BLONDE now? What happened??????